featured blog posts

This month, I continued my conversations with leaders from around the world on today's pressing issues in education -- from the challenges of graduates seeking jobs to the psychological burden of bullying to the Japanese academic community's protests for peace.

Though pockets of it are still holding strong, most of Brooklyn has been swept by a sea of trilby-wearing millennials with waxed beards, who just wanna give back to the neighborhood with an artisanal dog treat shop, you know?

Back home in Minnesota, the lakes are sparkling, and throngs of people will soon be flying around them on bikes. How do these go together under one God, the horrors of Auschwitz and the comfort of this time and place?

As much as Sex and The City wanted us to think it, New York isn't your boyfriend. And since it isn't your dumb boyfriend, it's free to be perfect -- and New York is perfect. I recently had two West Coasters say things like, "New York is great, but all people do there is sit in bars and talk." Can you imagine anything better?

While some prosecutors do their job honestly and stand for justice, there are others who are responsible for intentionally wrongfully convicting innocent people. And as if that weren't enough, they do whatever is necessary to maintain these false convictions.

FAILE may be a religious experience this summer at the Brooklyn Museum, but only one of the hallowed installations is called "Temple." The seedier, more dimly lit venue will surely have the larger number of congregants by far, bless their sacred hearts.

These days we get to see and hear our grandchildren who live on the other side of the world. But it's not the same as cuddling and tickling them, kissing them and smelling them. Even with Skype and FaceTime, being a long-distance grandparent stretches your heartstrings to breaking point.

The last time that I saw Frank Hickey, we were both around seven years of age, drawing with crayons on the wall of his bedroom. It was allowed. Had I done that in my brownstone, two houses away, I would have been killed.